Molecular Health and Axxam enter into a strategic partnership to bolster the discovery of innovative targets in drug development

Pairing data-driven clinical-molecular insights with biological validation to identify relevant drug targets and confirm leads for biopharmaceutical companies

MILAN, Italy and HEIDELBERG, Germany, June 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Axxam S.p.A., a premier provider of integrated early discovery services, and Molecular Health GmbH, a leader in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven development solutions, are announcing a strategic collaboration to accelerate the identification and validation of novel therapeutic targets across a broad range of therapeutic areas.

The companies will create unprecedented synergies to deliver precise and clinically driven disease-to-target and target-to-lead solutions to the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, by integrating Molecular Health’s digital drug development platform Dataome into Discovery^MAXX, Axxam’s integrated early drug discovery process, combining computational clinical-molecular insight with rigorous biological validation.

Dataome curates, integrates and structures molecular, phenotypic and clinical data from public, private and proprietary datasets. Its causal insights support pharmaceutical companies in improving drug development, predicting drug safety, optimizing clinical trials and enabling data-driven investment decisions.

As part of Dataome, Molecular Health applies advanced AI to analyze holistic complex datasets, helping their clients to identify novel, high-potential drug targets. These computational predictions can be seamlessly integrated into Axxam’s discovery platform, which incorporates decades of expertise in biology, assay development, phenotypic and target-based screening, and compound profiling. Through this partnership, AI-derived targets undergo rigorous experimental validation, using a broad suite of advanced in-vitro technologies – including induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-based models – to ensure biological and disease relevance and translational value.

“Identifying the right target is one of the most critical and challenging steps in drug discovery. At Axxam, we believe that biology-driven validation is key to translating digital assessments and predictions into real-world therapies,” said Ciriaco Maraschiello, CEO of Axxam. “This strategic partnership between a biology powerhouse like Axxam and a precision medicine-focused AI company like Molecular Health is enabling a new level of accuracy and efficiency in the early drug discovery process, allowing our clients to make more informed decisions, faster, in both preclinical and clinical development.”

“Understanding molecular causalities and variants in phenotypes, diseases and endotypes is essential for pharma and biotech companies to improve efficiency and success rates in drug development”, said Friedrich von Bohlen, CEO of Molecular Health. “The integration of our data/AI-based knowledge, simulations and predictions with Axxam’s preclinical biology and chemistry assays and expertise will offer improved and accelerated outcomes in early drug discovery. This will enable our joint clients to gain deeper insights, enhance decision-making, and expand their options for drug discovery and clinical development programs.”

By building a bridge between AI-powered clinical-molecular predictions and biological insight, Axxam and Molecular Health are poised to deliver next-generation discovery programs to pharmaceutical innovators worldwide.

About Axxam S.p.A.

Axxam S.p.A. is a leading provider of integrated discovery services across the life sciences industry. Within the drug discovery disciplines, we support pharma, biotech companies, start-ups, patient foundations as well as academic groups in their journey from hit identification to lead generation, regardless of the therapeutic area and target class. Our services include assay development, high-throughput screening, using either Axxam’s high quality compound collections (synthetic and natural) or those provided by clients, hit validation, hit-to-lead and compound management. The same science-driven approach is also applied to identify new bioactive compounds for crop protection, animal health, food, beverage, pet food, cosmetic and perfume industries. For more information, visit www.axxam.com.

About Molecular Health GmbH

Molecular Health is a leader in data-driven software technologies for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. For more than a decade, the company has combined human expertise, rigorous data curation, and advanced analytics – including artificial intelligence – to transform the world’s biomedical knowledge into actionable insight.

The company’s Pharma AI solutions power indication and biomarker discovery, target identification and validation, clinical-trial design and simulation, endpoint optimization, and safety prediction. At the core of these capabilities is Dataome, Molecular Health’s proprietary technology that integrates and contextualizes biomedical, molecular, phenotypic, and drug data to shed light on the etiology of health and disease.
For more information, visit www.molecularhealth.com.